


i think i saw you in the light once; you were beautiful, and i never learned how to look away

by paperpenpal



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Ingrid is a mess, Jealousy, No Beta, Pining, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Romance, a case for telling instead of showing, and by that i mean it's a lot of monologue, emotionally compromised individuals, it's basically a free write I string together, thought vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28055268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperpenpal/pseuds/paperpenpal
Summary: It never stings any less.  Ingrid keeps hoping it will.  She thinks,this will be the last time.  She says,no more Sylvain.It is never the last time.
Relationships: Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 57
Kudos: 88





	1. i cannot think of an easier way to say this so i won't

**Author's Note:**

> I had a shower thought and had to jot this down before I lost it.
> 
> AKA: I wrote this in a frenzy and tried to keep it short

It never stings any less. Ingrid keeps hoping it will. She thinks, _this will be the last time._ She says, _no more Sylvain._

It is never the last time.

Sylvain always smiles something handsomely sheepish at her, he always playfully teases, he sometimes promises he’ll stop.

And he does.

But never for long.

Sylvain is not a cruel man, Ingrid is sure, but he can certainly be cruel. Underneath it all, she knows - she’s seen, the heart that beats golden.

It’s buried underneath all the bitterness that he holds close and spits only when he’s on the brink of some dark spiral, buried further underneath the humor and charm and showmanship he displays.

But Ingrid knows it’s there. She knows better than most. Sometimes, when she’s being particularly naive, she hopes that she’s the only one that knows.

It is why she sticks around. It is why she can do no more than huff with her hands on her hips and glare when she catches him again, behind the stables this time, his arm on some poor pretty girl’s waist as he whispers something sweet in her ears.

Ingrid stamps down the raging jealousy that bubbles in her throat. She focuses instead on her palms and how they sting as she presses her jagged bitten down nails as deep as they can possibly go.

Somedays, it is easier than this but today, this is the only way she can hold herself together. It is the only way she doesn’t rage at them both. Doesn’t rage at an innocent girl who had simply fallen for Sylvain’s charm just as Ingrid has.

 _"Sylvain,_ "Ingrid calls instead, voice clipped, but not more than normal. “Seriously? We have stable duty.”

He grins at her. Ingrid’s fists tighten even more as her heart does, then he smiles the same smile at the girl in his arms and Ingrid has to look away.

It never hurts any less.

* * *

Ingrid stares sometimes. She can’t help herself. It’s always when he’s got someone flocking to him. She does her best not to glare. Most of the time she succeeds. 

Felix catches her most often but that’s usually because he is often glaring in the same direction.

“That’s not going to end well,” he says, turning his head back to his breakfast in front of him. 

Sylvain is chatting up Dorothea at a table nearby. He’s got an easy smile on his face. Ingrid can’t see the expression Dorothea has but the fact that she’s still there means that she’s humoring him, which is how it always starts with girls like Dorothea.

Sylvain is charming. He is good at reading people. He often knows the right things to say.

“Dorothea can handle herself,” Ingrid decides anyway. She stabs her fork into her eggs a little more roughly than intended.

Felix, of course, notices but he doesn’t say anything. He raises an eyebrow instead. 

Ingrid sighs. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” she explains even though no question was asked. “Dorothea is my friend. I’d rather he stop altogether but I _really_ wish he would stop flirting with my friends.”

Felix shrugs. She can’t tell if he believes her or if he is simply letting it go. Perhaps, he simply doesn’t care.

“You could tell him that,” Felix says.

“You and I both know it wouldn’t change anything,” Ingrid says bitterly.

Felix doesn’t reply. It’s because they both know it’s true.

* * *

Mercedes is the first one to confront her about it, although it is less of a confrontation and more of a conversation. In truth, she is the first one to point-blank ask. Everyone else either hasn’t noticed, is too polite, or hasn’t cared enough to. 

“ _Oh Ingrid_ ,” Mercedes says. And it’s the tone in which she says it that reminds Ingrid why she hasn’t said anything to anyone before. It is the way Mercedes looks at her, sad and yet with some assumed sage-like understanding of the situation. 

It makes Ingrid’s blood boil. 

It’s more complicated than that, Ingrid wants to explain. It’s not just a simple case of chasing the unobtainable, of waiting and hoping. Ingrid is not so naive to think that this is as easy or juvenile as some unfortunate schoolyard crush. It is a lot more. It is a history that she cannot share because it is a history that belongs only to her and Sylvain. 

It is too much to explain. Words oversimplify the matter.

“It’s okay,” Ingrid says instead with a sigh. “I’m used to it.”

Mercedes says nothing more. 

* * *

This is how it happens. Slowly, over time and after Glenn. It is unintentional but Ingrid figures that if feelings were intentional, everyone would be happy and in love and there would be no complicated notions about marriage and social class.

She wishes it was easy. She wishes it was intentional. She wishes she chose Sylvain. She wishes every day that he would choose her.

She doesn’t like that version of her. Ingrid hates the part of her that says, _maybe_ , that says, _wait_ , that says, _pine_ and pine endlessly in the hopes that he’ll see her. She hates her heart. 

Because she knows that this is a love that will never come to be.

Sylvain’s heart is caged behind the thick stone walls of some frozen well hidden in the tundraitic hellscape of heartless Gautier. He will never let it free. He will certainly never free it for her. 

It would have happened already otherwise. 

Because Sylvain is kind to her, even when he is kind to few else. He wouldn’t hurt her if he knew. He hurts a great many people, hurts them on purpose. Ingrid knows this, she hates him for this too. 

But he is kind to his friends. He cares for them deeply. He trails after them and hopes for them and loves them in the single certain steady way he allows himself to. 

She knows this because all those years ago, Sylvain Jose Gautier knocked on her door after traveling three days on horseback through the splintered dangerous shortcut paths they were told never to take all the way down south to Galatea just to speak to her through the other side of a locked wooden door.

She told him to go away and he said, _when have I ever listened to you?_ She said it again and he said, _I dare you to make me_. When she finally let him in, it was because he wouldn’t stop singing stupid songs offkey about Dimitri’s bad hair, and then he slept on her cold wooden floor for three days until she finally got sick of him and left the room.

That’s love too. That needs to be enough. 

So Ingrid doesn’t say anything to him about her feelings. Sometimes, it is hard to hold but somehow, as sharp as Sylvain is, as well as he knows her, he never catches on.

She likes to think of it as a sign. It reads, he hasn’t even considered it; it has never crossed his mind that she could love him. That he could have her.

And on the back of that wooden sign, carved crooked in tiny subscript in the corner that no one sees are the words, _he doesn’t want you._

* * *

Sylvain is nursing a bruised lip from some girl’s brother trying to defend her honor, or at least, that’s the story he’s telling. Ingrid is too angry to search for the whole story. In the beginning, she used to learn as much as she could. She used to find all the sides to the conflict. She used to try to mediate. 

Now, Ingrid whacks at a training dummy and takes Sylvain at his bruised face’s value. Which is to say, that he actually hardly ever lies to her. He somehow seems to wear these encounters like a badge of dishonor. He is not apologetic in the least. He usually says, _I deserved it,_ with some strange twisted grin. He usually admits that he was wrong. Then he goes and does it again anyway.

There is no salvaging a man who seeks this kind of punishment. She can only feel angry that he does it or else wallow in the fact that the man she loves is so broken that self-destruction is the only outlet he is willing to consider.

 _I’m right here,_ she has stopped saying. _Talk to me._

Ingrid has tried many things with Sylvain. She has tried to be the friend he was to her. She has knocked on his door and refused to move. She has tried to berate and yell at him, hoping that if he wants punishment, she would be enough. She has tried to love him and she has tried to hate him.

Nothing seems to work. 

It is hard not to wonder if the problem is with her. If the reason it worked so well for Sylvain when he came to her and dragged her out of the room was because it is much easier to hold your ground when you didn’t love the same way she does.

When you don’t hurt the same way she does.

The training dummy is in tatters when she is done. It will need to be replaced. As will the broken training lance.

“Maybe you need some distance,” Mercedes tells her later. “How are you supposed to move on when he’s always right in front of you?”

Mercedes has a point. Sylvain is everywhere and when he isn’t, she feels him anyway. Every hallway has a memory of some apologetic smile he’s thrown her, every classroom the ghost of some joke she barely remembers that he tells her. 

Space is a good idea.

* * *

Space is only an idea. A week after Ingrid decides to make some distance, Miklan dies at their hands. She cannot abandon Sylvain when he needs her, not when the Lance of Ruin sits by his bedframe tormenting him.

Her heart seems so silly in comparison. It feels like it means nothing in Miklan’s wake. She refuses to watch Sylvain drown in it. 

His door is not locked but he doesn’t come to open it when she knocks. She barges through all by herself.

He is in a bad state. Sylvain smells of alcohol and blood and women’s perfume. He talks to her all night, raging drunkenly about how stupid he feels for grieving and how much he hates the things his brother has done, how he hates that he still cares. Ingrid holds him to her chest, cries with him, and whispers soft reassurances that she’s sure he won’t remember in the morning.

He says many graciously sweet things to her that night. She tries to forget them all.

_You’re always there for me Ing._

_I don’t know what I’d do without you._

_The Goddess may be cruel but you aren’t._

_Thank you._

_I don’t deserve you._

_Have I ever told you that you’re beautiful?_

Then he brushes her hair back. Then, his thumb wipes away her tears. Then, he kisses her - soft and light and quick.

It tastes like alcohol and blood and the smell of women’s perfume.

Then Sylvain forgets.

Ingrid tries to forget this too.

* * *

Ingrid keeps close to him in the aftermath that follows. Sylvain’s behavior is largely the same. He is dark for a few weeks but she manages to pull him back, pull him away from hurting someone underserving because he is never given a chance to with how closely she sticks by him.

He doesn’t seem to mind. He does not make cruel or even playful jokes about her hovering. This is how she knows he appreciates it. 

Sylvain does not kiss her again. 

He only says, _thank you for being there,_ even when he remembers very little of it. He tells her so. He tells her that waking up in her arms made him feel the first sense of comfort afterward, made him realize that comfort could still exist because it exists in her.

It is a very sweet line. It is said so easily. It is said with a smile that makes her believe that he believes it but Ingrid is not always kind to herself. It sounds too saccharine. It sounds too close to something else. 

She was there for him during his time of need. As he was for her. It is nothing more than that. 

* * *

No one accounts for war. Despite all this time spent training for battle, gearing to be soldiers, there was always the understanding that it would not be needed.

It turns out, they were wrong.

Too many things happen in too little time. Ingrid has no more youthful innocence to dwell on happy academy days by Sylvain’s side. She tosses the locked box of her complicated relationship with Sylvain onto a shelf somewhere to collect dust and focuses instead on her lance.

It is easier to do when they are all scattered. It is easier to read carefully benign letters from him than to see his face. 

Her father presses her harder than ever to marry, too worried about their rapidly dwindling resources. It is harder to dodge now that Ingrid is at home again. Before, she could burn letters or forget to pen replies.

Now, more than ever, there is a sense of urgency.

Ingrid is saved only because there are few suitors in war. Most of them are conscripted or playing careful games of false neutrality in an attempt to save their hides. That is enough to convince Ingrid that they are not worthy of her attention.

Her father is a good and loyal man who loves her. She is grateful for this. She is lucky for this but she also knows that this cannot last forever. 

But perhaps it will last long enough. She can hope for that now. Some days, it is the only thing she can hope for.

Ingrid only sees Sylvain a few times a year in their time after the Academy. They are all very brief encounters. Twice, she aids him in battle at his request. Most of the time, he comes to the Estate to talk politics with her father and stays in the guest room down the hall. They spend what little time they have catching up over tea.

It is easy companionship when he comes. Her heart doesn’t ache when she sees him. It is only careful happy warmth she feels when she meets his tired beautiful eyes. 

She thinks, at the end of each of his visits, that she has done it. That space and time and age has finally done it. That she loves him but no longer in a way that pains her. That the world is upside down but at least her heart is not.

Ingrid thinks, _this is finally enough_.

She is wrong.


	2. it turns out that later is a silly thing to hope for (and all this bitterness has to go somewhere eventually)

Here’s why:

The promise that they all keep pulls them back together. It also means that Ingrid sees him again, sees Sylvain every day. The old dusty box her heart is in falls off the high shelf and cracks wide open onto hardwood and seeps deep into the gaps between the floorboards, straight through to her veins, filling her body up.

It is stupid to fall in love with a man twice. It is enraging that the man is Sylvain.

The first time it happened had been slow and gradual. It was done over time. It was many quiet moments of honesty between them that Sylvain rarely allows anyone else to see. Sometimes, when Ingrid’s feeling particularly hopeful, she dreams that it’s because she’s his exception.

 _You’re a disaster_ , she used to say, pressing ice to his bruised eye or split lip in a dusty classroom with just the two of them as the light bleeds in from the courtyard.

 _I know,_ he would admit, sitting on top of a desk so that she can reach him easily. _I can’t seem to stop._

It is not his charming smile of flirtations that she fell in love with. Those are parts of himself that he shows everyone. Sometimes, when she is in a good mood, she can be swayed by them, yes, but underneath it all is the boy she’s watched go cold. The boy that loves and loves deeply, that perhaps seeks it desperately but doesn’t feel he deserves it, even when it is right in front of him.

_See me._

_Please._

Sylvain has never noticed the way Ingrid wants to hold his hand, cannot see how much she yearns to press his head against her chest and make him listen to it beat for him.

This time it hits her with a force that knocks her off balance. He smiles at her again, handsome on high horseback and righteous as they descend on the Monastery again to keep a promise. He wields his weapon like it belongs on his body, like it doesn’t haunt him even though she knows it still does. He wields it like he’s ready. He wields it like he wants to thaw.

And the storm that brews in her chest explodes and she _knows_ , Ingrid knows that she could never not love him. Not in this lifetime. 

But they are different now, she hopes. He’s changed. He stands taller and she doesn’t have to drag him out of bed anymore to make the war council meetings he listens thoughtfully in. The gashes she nurses are no longer from drunken brawls and instead from roadside bandits or monsters in the distance. 

Everything’s changed.

Ingrid has too.

She’s cut her hair.

* * *

The problem with Sylvain is that he turns on a dime. One moment, he’s jokingly flirtatious while asking to join her training and then the next moment he’s incredibly honest. It is hard to navigate, especially when her heart is so heavy with war and with him.

On bad days, on tougher days when her heart can’t take too many hits, Ingrid knows she comes off too aggressive. 

_How ridiculous,_ she snaps. _Almost as ridiculous as your face._

What a desperate, uncreative, and exhausted insult.

Most of the time, Sylvain’s fine with it. He takes her punches and laughs it off.

_You'd really say something like that to a handsome guy like me? I'm crushed!_

Sometimes it happens even when he’s being sincere. 

_I thought you would listen_.

The apology catches on her tongue. Sylvain barrels on without it. 

_Just stay where I can see you._

It is too hard to hope. It is easy for a quip to fall out of her throat.

_You're useless without me, after all._

And it is a good thing too because afterwards he tells her _let's never change,_ and breaks her heart all over again.

_Absolutely. No matter what happens, we'll always be friends, Sylvain._

She breaks her own heart too.

* * *

Ingrid doesn’t know how to let him go. She doesn’t know how to stop loving a man who refuses to be loved.

But she does know how to keep her promises. 

And she promised she would stick by him. If she had known how much it would hurt afterward, if she had known that she would spend her nights curled up facing a blank empty wall thinking of him, she wouldn’t have made it at all.

Promises are easy to make to Sylvain when he looks right at her with hopeful vulnerable eyes. They are easy to make when he reaches his hand out and asks her to hold it. They are easy to make to him. 

They are not easy to make to herself, left lonely with only her broken heartbeat’s company.

The Monastery sleeps. Ingrid doesn’t.

* * *

The letters from her father keep coming. Mostly, these days, they are pleasant. Sometimes, he makes mention of looking for matches but unlike the Academy days, he rarely gives her a name. Mostly, he is proud but worried. 

But it reminds her of what she will meet if the war ends in victory. Sometimes, it makes it hard to fight.

Ingrid trains through anyway. 

It is her duty after all.

* * *

There’s a moment that happens. It’s a moment where something changes. Ingrid is used to Sylvain flirting with her. It is endlessly frustrating most days because, like most of the things he does, it hurts. 

It hurts because it’s so flippant. It hurts because she believes in half of the things he’s saying but she also knows that he says them to everyone else.

Ingrid knows he finds her beautiful. It makes it harder, actually, to know. Every time he says something near to it, she remembers the kiss he’s forgotten, stolen in a moment of pure desperation.

But being pretty to Sylvain means very little. He finds everyone pretty. 

What is special between them is how he regards her as a friend but that’s hard too because it will never be much more. 

Until maybe, perhaps, something changes.

She doesn’t know what it might be. She hopes it is not as simple as makeup because Sylvain comes barreling into her babbling nonsense and she has to hold herself back enough not to scream at him.

 _It’s you,_ she wants to say. _I’ve fallen for you. And it’s anything but recent._

When he leaves her that day, when he actually bolts, Ingrid feels a stirring of something. Sylvain does not run away like this at the face of a pretty girl. He especially does not run from her.

She wonders if it means something.

* * *

It doesn’t last long. For exactly one week, Ingrid feels lighter on her feet. The heart in her chest does not feel as heavy. It feels like early days- all the way back when she first uncovered the origins of the fluttering in her chest.

The truth is, after Glenn, after the deep dark black hole of grief, and after Sylvain pushed her back out of her room and into the world again, her burgeoning feelings for him made her realize that there could be life after Glenn.

It wasn’t the same then. She hadn’t felt so tethered to Sylvain. It was more akin to how she felt about Glenn. Sylvain was handsome and kind to her. He would say things to make her laugh and then he would do things that made her blush.

Ingrid wishes it would have stayed that way, stayed some cute fanciful crush and not this dark twisted thing in her chest that aches always.

She finds him in the hallway again. Sylvain was always flirtatious, that hadn’t stopped because of the war, but she hadn’t caught him since. For five years, Ingrid did not have to see him whisper sweet somethings to a girl much more beautiful than her. She did not have to see a hand at his collar, urging him close as he braced an arm above her against the cold stone wall.

There is nothing to do but leave. Sylvain is grown. He is older. Ingrid thought he might have been getting better.

She cannot watch this. She also cannot break it up. He might even genuinely like the woman. He is different now, Ingrid supposes, she is the one who is as she ever was. 

It is cowardly to flee but she can think of nothing else to do.

Ingrid doesn’t get very far. Her heart crushes with every step of her metal boots, slow and sluggish with a heavy clank as if savoring the way her chest aches and breaks. 

She can’t help but compare herself to the pretty lady on Sylvain’s arm. Can’t help but stare down at her metal boots and wonder if he’d prefer a girl in a pretty dress.

Mercedes runs into her and she must have seen Sylvain because she can only look at Ingrid with sad kind eyes and a small little frown. 

“ _Oh Ingrid_ ,” she says. “Still?”

Ingrid does not cry, but she can feel her body want to. She is shaky as she smiles. “I’m afraid it’ll be always.” 

* * *

In retrospect, it is very stupid not to wander farther away. Mercedes sits her down on one of the alcoves nearby as Ingrid leans into her shoulder. She is too exhausted to do much more.

There is not a lot Ingrid wants to say. There is no point to it. Ingrid has held it in herself for so long that she’s not even sure words can be formed at all. This love she feels for Sylvain and this bond that they share is far and beyond anything she could try and explain. It is not a matter of oversimplifying it anymore. It has gone far past that. 

“I’m not sure I can keep doing this,” Ingrid confesses quietly.

“You shouldn’t,” Mercedes advises. 

“I have to.” 

Mercedes opens her mouth to say something but she’s cut off by the clanking footsteps of someone jogging up to them. 

What she remembers later, what Ingrid replays in her mind when she finally retreats behind the locked door of her dorm room is the sudden stop in Sylvain’s voice as it falters on her name (she must have been in a state, red-eyed and hair a mess from resting it against Mercedes’ shoulder) and how it changed to something soft and something sweet.

 _Hey, what happened?_ _Is there anything I can do?_

“No, Sylvain,” she had said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

* * *

It is not entirely easy to put distance between her and Sylvain. He follows her around, obviously worried, and she does not forget her promise to stay close. It is such a stupid promise. It’ll kill her to keep it.

Not too long after, a name comes across her desk, some wealthy merchant with hopes for a better title, asking to meet. Her father has finally found a suitor in war.

Sylvain finds the letter. It is her fault really. Ingrid had left it out in the open. 

And it is pure spite and bitterness that leads her to accept because it is Sylvain’s wild incredulity that spurns her. _You’re not really going to meet with him, are you?_

There are so many things that spin in her head when he huffs at her, indignant. Questions about why he even cares, things about how much it hurts to love him. The confession is on her tongue.

Instead, she holds it like she has done so many times before and simply and curtly tells him it’s none of his business. She tells him to leave. 

He does.

* * *

Ingrid is too stubborn to apologize to Sylvain and too prideful to rescind the invitation to meet. And it is just a meeting after all.

Her father sends her a pretty dress from who knows where. Mercedes helps her with her makeup and thankfully says nothing about the whole affair. They both know this pain well.

Her suitor is nice. He is not a nobleman but he is a gentleman. They take tea at the Monastery courtyard and he doesn’t even seem to mind the war arrangements. His smile seems genuine and there is a nervousness about him that tells her that he was not born into this kind of status.

In fact, his status is not particularly impressive at all, it is his gold her father is after. 

They have a pleasant conversation. He even expresses an interest in knight tales although admits that he is not a man of metal.

He is pleasant. He is perhaps the most pleasant of any of her suitors.

He is also not Sylvain.

* * *

Sylvain accosts her afterward. He catches her on the way back to her room. Ingrid is ready to rid herself of this pretty mint green dress and run down to the Training Grounds to spar with Felix. She can think of little else she wants more. 

It’s almost like he’s waiting for her. He pushes off the wall he had been leaning against and crosses his arms to stand in front of her. His frown says he disapproves. Ingrid knows why. He hates the whole affair as much as she does. He always has. She has no illusions about it being about her. 

“You actually met with him?” Sylvain growls.

She is too tired to argue or bite back. Ingrid has never felt so drained from such a pleasantly benign conversation. She does not want to do this with Sylvain now. She’s not sure she ever wants to do this with Sylvain.

“What does it matter to you, Sylvain,” she says exhausted. “It is done.”

“Do you not remember the last suitor you met with?” he says fiercely. “If it wasn’t for Dorothea-”

“This is nothing like the last time Sylvain, and you know it. What was he going to do? Try to take me in the middle of the courtyard?”

Sylvain’s jaw sets into a hardened line. He is angry at her but he has no argument he could win here. They both know it. “What’s he like?” he asks instead.

Ingrid blinks, surprised by the sudden question. 

“He’s nice,” she admits. “A bit meek but nice otherwise.”

“Nice,” Sylvain scoffs. “Right.” 

“Sylvain-”

“Why?”

“What do you mean why?” Ingrid snaps. “You know why.”

“Are you going to accept?” 

She was not but his anger riles her up too. How dare he question her like this. How dare he when he is the root of all of this. 

“This,” she seethes, “has nothing to do with you.”

“Ingrid!” he explodes, throwing his hands up in the air, “you barely know him!”

“Why do you care?” Her bitterness and pain spill out ugly between them. She is ashamed immediately by them.

Sylvain reels back as if he’s been slapped. She knows because she’s slapped him before but his eyes are never this wide when she does. She never takes him by true surprise.

His voice lowers to something sad. “How can you even ask that?”

She bites her lip and focuses on the sting, if only to redirect away from the sting in her heart and eyes. 

“I’m not doing this,” she says. Ingrid stalks past him but before she gets too far, she feels his hand catch onto her wrist, gripping tight.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks. There’s is something desperate in his voice. For a moment, Ingrid hopes, but only for a moment. “You’re not going to be able to stay if you do this.”

Ingrid’s eyes close. She takes a deep steadying breath. When she opens them, there are no tears. “It hurts,” she manages.

Sylvain’s grip loosens immediately. When she turns, she sees his horrified expression and she realizes that he’s misunderstood. He will never see it as it is. Sylvain will never see her heart. 

“Sorry,” he says quickly, holding his hands up. “But Ingrid, why-”

Ingrid reaches up with both of her hands. Her palms cup his cheeks and she leans up as high as she can until their lips touch and she kisses him like he had kissed her all those years ago. 

It is soft and light and quick. There is no taste at all this time.

Sylvain freezes. He does not respond. He does not even breathe. It is all Ingrid needs to know.

_Because you won’t kiss me like you love me._

“I’m sorry Sylvain,” Ingrid says, turning to leave. 

He does not follow.


	3. hey there rubberband boy, why does your heart swing like so?

There’s this dream.

Sylvain is sure it’s a dream. It has to be a dream. He’s had it before. It comes to him sometimes, usually when he’s feeling lonely, and then he always wakes up. Then, he has only the ghost of it.

The ghost of Ingrid’s lips on his. 

The first time, it is chased away by a headache so severe that he heaved off the side of his bed, losing the night before. 

Sylvain doesn’t remember much of that dream. That morning, he forgets he even has it and focuses instead on Ingrid’s hands against the curve of his back, marking slow circles and soothing him like she cares, and, for the first time, Sylvain’s heart knows it.

Someone cares about him. They all keep telling him. Felix, Dimitri, Ingrid - they tell him in their own ways but it’s not until the morning after the night they murder his brother that Sylvain knows it. It is not until Ingrid hauls him upright on his bed to kneel in front of him, to look upon him with morning eyes, to brush the sick off his lips with her own sleeve, and says, _how do you feel?_ that his heart feels it without a single hint of doubt.

Ingrid cares about him. When his heart is heavy with hate and fear, when he is the ugliest he has ever been, when he has manifested the deepest darkest most drunken words buried deep in his soul out into reality as he claws red fingertips over his white uniform shirt against his chest, Ingrid weathers through and holds him all night.

Of course he dreams of her. 

It is only natural then to dream about her sometimes, dream about her shining eyes and a sweet kiss that never ever happened.

It comes to him at night when he misses her. Through years apart with only the trace of her name on the letters she signs or with only passing updates he hears through Fraldarius, her territory on the lips of strategy men, it is only natural to dream of her.

After all, Sylvain dreams of everyone else too. 

But Ingrid’s lips- when he wakes from that dream, he holds onto the warmth of it. He holds onto the whispered words of _I’m not going anywhere Sylvain,_ and nurtures it. It reminds him, in the frigid empty cold of dark winter Gautier, that he is loved.

And he had almost forgotten it.

Sylvain has not had that dream in a long time. Not since reuniting. Not since he crushed her into a hug and spun her three times, listening to her chastise him through her laugh as he complimented her pretty hair cut short and felt, for the first time since the war, that relief could exist in the world. 

He had forgotten it until her hands stretched up and held his face, featherlight and gentle, and her lips pressed onto his, so briefly and quickly that he couldn’t even move, and his thoughts immediately jumped and said, _this must be a dream_.

And then Ingrid is gone.

And then he is in the hallway, hands hovering empty in the air. 

That night, Sylvain has a new dream. It’s that hallway again, replaying over and over in his mind.

_It hurts._

Sylvain doesn’t sleep.

* * *

Sylvain doesn’t wake up from this dream. What he wakes up to instead is a world where Ingrid hides away from him.

It is not quite a broken promise but is closer than Ingrid has ever come to one.

She stays where he can see her but only just. She is never there for long. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand the kiss in the hallway. He doesn’t understand her sad eyes or the way his chest hurts when he watches her walk away from him.

Sylvain doesn’t understand. He desperately wants to. Ingrid is nowhere. He doesn’t get a chance.

* * *

Felix throws daggers at a dartboard. It’s the only tavern that Felix lets himself be dragged to because they let him throw knives at the wall. 

There are too many people. Sylvain usually likes it. Today something feels empty despite all the bustle. 

“So she’s meeting him again,” Felix says casually.

Sylvain frowns. “What?”

“Ingrid,” Felix replies. “She’s meeting him again.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Felix throws Sylvain a strange look. Sylvain can’t read it, which is odd because he can usually read Felix. 

“I thought that was why we were here,” Felix says. 

The conversation doesn’t continue. Felix throws more knives at the wall. Sylvain drinks more. Someone pretty comes up to him with an offer but that night, Sylvain stumbles back to the Monastery alone and stops at Ingrid’s door. He knocks.

She doesn’t answer.

* * *

He still doesn’t sleep. Mostly, he dozes. Mostly, he thinks of her.

* * *

Sylvain sees them walk around the courtyard- Ingrid and her suitor. 

He doesn’t know what this means for Ingrid to see a man twice. She has never ever done this before. She has never, to Sylvain’s knowledge, smiled at them and tucked a pretty little flower into her hair. 

This is wrong.

He feels it again.

It’s this something, this angry something that crawls out of a deep dark well, drenched up to its knees in frozen hell water and clutches at his throat. He has only ever felt this once before, only ever felt this staring at this meek man in glasses and fine-looking coat, who smiles and who wants to take Ingrid away.

Sylvain hates this man.

He knows hate well. He hates a great many people in his life. He hates himself too.

But he doesn’t know this other feeling. He just knows that this is all wrong.

* * *

Sylvain finds her after this encounter too. This time he is ready for anything. He stands outside her dorm room door and waits. She doesn’t look surprised to see him. She only looks exhausted, which makes him worry and that deep dark something dissipates immediately. 

“You okay?” Sylvain asks, taking a careful step towards her. “Did he say something to upset you?”

Ingrid shakes her head and takes a step back. Something in his chest sinks when she does, sinks all the way back into that well. 

“No,” she says, “he’s actually quite the gentleman.”

“Everyone is a gentleman at first,” he warns.

Ingrid throws him a sharp look. It relaxes him, somehow. This feels right. This sharpness feels right, not whatever else she has been holding in her eyes these days, this strange sadness that he’s never seen before, not even with Glenn. 

“I’m not a child Sylvain,” she says. “But he’s nice. That’s worth something.”

The words race out of him before he thinks them, “I need you.”

Ingrid freezes. Her fingertips curl into fists. Her eyes shut close and then flutter open after she takes a breath. “I know,” she says, “I know you do.”

“Don’t leave,” he tries. Something in his throat catches. It might be his heart. “Please, don’t leave.” 

“I’m not leaving,” she tells him, but something feels wrong. Ingrid should not be saying this with glassy eyes, she should not be saying this so softly and so sadly that he almost doesn’t hear her. He knows something is wrong. “But I need some space.”

His heart pounds. He doesn’t understand. “From me?”

“Yes.”

“What did I do?”

“Nothing, Sylvain, you haven’t done a thing. It’s me.”

He wracks his brain. His eyebrows furrow. “Because you kissed me?” 

Her face flushes. She won’t catch his eyes. “Yes.”

“That’s okay,” he says quickly. “Ingrid, it’s okay. It’s just a kiss.”

This is the wrong thing to say. 

“ _For you,_ ” she says, blinking rapidly at him. She’s trying to clear her tears. He knows because she hates crying in front of him. “It was just a kiss for you.”

“Ingrid-”

“I love you,” she says in a rush. 

Sylvain knows this. Ingrid has always loved him. They have always loved and cared for each other. It is why she always stays. 

“I know you do,” Sylvain says. “I mean I lo-”

“ _No,_ ” Ingrid says fiercely. “You don’t. Not the way I do.”

The way she looks at him, blazing and yet shaking, will burn forever in his memory.

It clicks. It finally clicks. He doesn’t know why it takes so damn long. Sylvain may act the fool but he’s not one, not truly. He understands a lot of things. He can read people well. He understands Ingrid so well. He knows she harnesses grief like a weapon, forging her own path forward in a desperate attempt to make sense of something senseless. He knows that she acts more than she hesitates because she can’t afford to think about what tragedy may occur if she waits because her heart can take no more burden. He knows that as hardline and harsh as she can be, she always makes exceptions for him, she always comes back for him.

He should have seen. 

Sylvain should have known. 

Why didn’t he know?

“Ingrid,” he says softly. He doesn’t know what to say.

She shakes her head sadly and walks right up to him for the first time in two weeks. And Sylvain sees her, sees the whole of her from up close for the first time. He sees how deeply she loves and feels it, feels it just like he had that night after Miklan. Then, he sees exactly the toll her heart has taken from the many times he’s broken it.

Her hand comes to pat his chest. “It’s okay,” she says. “But I need time.”

He can say nothing other than, “okay.” 

It is a mistake.

* * *

Something keeps coming to him. It’s a silly memory. He’s not sure what possessed him to act that way. Maybe it had just been as simple as the image of her.

Ingrid, against the rubble and lit by broken sunlight. Ingrid, breathtakingly word-trippingly beautiful.

Ingrid who made him babble on high pitched, and let him ramble giddy and foolish. 

Ingrid, whose heart he’s broken a thousand times and stayed anyway. 

_Always me, always for you. Every time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be the last one, I swear.


	4. i'm sorry i couldn't see what i couldn't understand, but how come you never asked me to?

Sylvain doesn’t want space. He has never really wanted space from Ingrid. If anything, he has only ever hoped to have her a little closer. Especially in the last five years. Especially with all that time spent away from each other.

But Ingrid had asked. It is the least he can do. After everything he’s ever put her through, he can do this for her.

So he keeps his distance.

It is hard when he sees her every day. It is hard when he almost forgets, when he is only a dozen or so feet away from her, when he makes a joke and looks for her eyeroll and waits for her laugh only to be met with the gap her silence brings.

Ingrid doesn’t sit with him at breakfast. If she ever finds herself in the same room with him alone, she simply smiles and leaves. There is no excuse or explanation. There is no need for one. 

He misses her more every time. 

He thought he was done with missing Ingrid. Five years away from her was long enough. He thought he’d have a little more time with her. He asked her to stay and she said okay and it had been unfair of him.

He just didn’t know.

It was easier before to miss her. Barely easier, but the expanse of space between them had been real. It had been miles and miles of horizon stretching across twisted paths of ice and snow and dying brown grass. It was something he could see and picture. In his mind, he could see Ingrid in Galatea, penning letters to him in her bedroom, her script burned into his memory.

The space between them now is less clear. He just knows that between them is her heart and it is a heart that Sylvain doesn’t know how to see.

* * *

There are few sources of comfort in war. Sylvain has tried many things over the years but it is not until all that separation, it is not until he is stuck in icy Gautier waiting for news of his friends that he knows what works for him.

It is not the fervor kisses taken behind the back of a tavern. It is not his hands bracing against the stable walls. It is the company of the friends he keeps.

It is hard when he is missing more than one.

Sylvain cannot do anything about Dimitri. He knows this, but there is something he can do for Ingrid. He has to try for her.

But this is his fault. Ingrid is his fault. He cannot help but feel guilty for that. The only way to fix it is time but it is time he doesn’t want to have away from her. 

The contradiction in his heart hurts. He has only ever taken from everyone. If Ingrid can stand silently next to him for however long while he selfishly takes, he can give. He wants to give it back to her. 

He would give it all to her if he knew how.

“I hate this,” he admits to Felix one day. 

His friend is not sympathetic. “Then do something about it.”

“She asked for space,” Sylvain explains. “I want to give it to her.”

Felix says nothing. Perhaps that is because there is nothing to say. 

“Did you know?” Sylvain asks. He does not elaborate on his question but the shift in Felix's face says that Sylvain does not have to.

“Everyone knew,” Felix says.

“I didn’t.”

“Didn’t you?”

* * *

Felix’s question sprouts new context into old memories, repainting them in a new tint. They all play out in Sylvain’s head over and over again. Every single time Ingrid lectured him, every look she’s ever thrown him, all those times she’s stomped away - 

_I am as I ever was._

He should have known. 

He has hurt her. He has hurt her every time with every action. 

How could he not know?

Mercedes, with sympathetic kind eyes that somehow do not hate him, offers him an answer. “Maybe you just didn’t want to see it.”

“See what?”

“How many times you’ve broken her heart.”

* * *

It shouldn’t be him. Ingrid deserves so much better. She deserves a man that doesn’t constantly hurt her. She deserves someone who isn’t so ugly and twisted. She deserves someone she doesn’t always have to be put back together.

Who doesn’t kiss her when she’s crying.

Sylvain remembers now. He remembers the kiss he stole from her that night. He had been so drunk and so angry. She kept him together. He’s not convinced he would be here if not for her.

That night, Ingrid had reached deep down a vast dark tunnel of self-torment and hefted his ragged heavy body onto hers and carried him out, scaling up the walls of that well he thought he long left behind.

He could think of nothing else other than to sing her praises and kiss her. It had saved him. 

She saved him.

At the cost of herself.

Ingrid deserves better. 

She deserves the meek man in glasses whose name Sylvain refuses to learn, who smiles at her and gifts her nice things and tells her that he doesn’t mind the wait. 

Sylvain had overheard. 

He can’t help it. He may not be allowed near her but he still listens. He still watches. He still needs her.

Ingrid’s suitor is a nice man, she keeps saying. Ingrid could do worse. Ingrid _has_ done worse but every time Sylvain thinks about them together, every time he thinks of her leaving, Sylvain stops breathing. 

It is just for a moment- only just a moment, but it seizes his body whole. It freezes and aches and burns all at once. It is like nothing he has ever felt before.

He has always needed Ingrid. He has always loved her. He wants desperately to love her the way she asks.

But he doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know what that is.

* * *

Ingrid keeps her word. She stays where he can see her when they’re off fighting a war that must be won. It is the closest she ever gets to him these days.

He will protect her until his last breath. He will keep her alive. He will do everything she asks of him.

She does not ask for much. 

It strikes him then suddenly. In the middle of a war. In the middle of battle, as he watches her parry and strike and survive.

Ingrid has never once asked for his heart.

* * *

The gash on his leg stings. It is not serious enough to bother anyone for. There are many other soldiers and knights that need more. Sylvain grits through it. 

He cannot reach it properly from where he sits in the cot. It is difficult and he is sore. It may not be serious but it is big. He needs more bandages. 

Ingrid finds him.

For a moment, it is like he learns how to breathe again. 

“I saw you take that hit,” she explains. “I’m sorry I wasn’t fast enough.”

They’ve talked since she asked for distance but never just the two of them and always about war. He wonders how long she’ll stay.

He wonders if she misses him as much as he misses her.

She must, he realizes, if she’s still in love with him, she must. 

This would be harder for her. He tries to keep that in mind. 

“You were perfect,” he says but then he regrets it, regrets it because Ingrid almost flinches. “I was just too slow.”

He watches her set her jaw. Her gaze hardened and resolved meet his, then she stalks up to him to take the wraps out of his hand. 

“Ingrid-”

“It doesn’t look deep,” she says, examining his leg. “You should find Mercedes when you get a chance and I bet she can heal the whole thing up but for now, this will keep anything from getting in it.”

“Okay,” he says.

He watches her work in silence. She makes quick work of it. Her hands only brush against his skin once or twice. And then she smiles. And then she is gone.

Sylvain feels the echo of her hands on his skin for hours afterward. 

* * *

He breaks first. Even after everything he’s done to her, even after all this time, it seems the only thing he’s capable of doing is disappoint her. 

The roaring dark something that he feels whenever he sees her smile at another man pushes him over the edge.

It is misery. He is sure of its name now. He is miserable. 

Ingrid is so damn strong. It almost makes him question. 

But she also doesn’t lie. She holds instead. Her gaze, her tongue, her heart.

She never gave him her heart. Ingrid just loved him while holding it in her own damn hands. 

It’s the courtyard this time. It happens because Sylvain catches a kiss. It is not on the lips. It just grazes the side of Ingrid’s cheek. It is the man in glasses, blushing a deep red, before taking his leave.

“Ingrid,” Sylvain says when she’s alone. 

She spins. There’s a bouquet of flowers she holds in her hands. “Hello Sylvain,” she says with a quiet sigh. There is no smile on her face. She had been smiling a second ago.

“You’re still seeing him,” he says.

She frowns. “I am.” 

Sylvain stamps a strangled gasp he doesn’t expect down. He can feel it clawing at the entrance of his throat, begging for freedom. 

“Why?”

“He’s-”

“Nice,” Sylvain can’t help but spit. “I know.”

“Are you here to yell again?” Ingrid asks. Her voice is level and careful. Distant. “Because I don’t want to hear it.”

“No.”

Ingrid shifts. The bouquet she holds lowers to her side. He watches the petals drag down towards the ground but they do not fall. “Then why are you here Sylvain?”

“I miss you.”

Ingrid’s eyes fall shut. Sylvain understands now, what this means. He sees that she is readying herself for her next breath. She’s done this a lot, he realizes. 

“I miss you too.” 

“Did it work?” he asks, taking a step forward closer. There is still a wide gap between them. He is scared of it. It feels like looking off the side of a precipice. He doesn’t want to fall. “The space- did it work?”

He wants to leap. 

“No,” she says. 

“Then why are you still seeing him?”

“My father and Galatea,” she says, waving absently in the direction he thinks is south. Then she bites her lip. “ He’s a good man, I think.”

She’s not talking about her father anymore.

“You deserve a good man,” Sylvain admits. “You do.”

“Thank you.” 

“I wish I was that man.”

Ingrid’s inhale carries across the canyon between them. It is sharp and loud. Her face twists and her eyes fall to the floor. He has hurt her again. 

It takes her a moment before she speaks. “Please don’t say such things.”

“I’m sorry,” Sylvain says. “For everything I’ve ever done. I’m so sorry, Ingrid.”

“Sylvain. Stop.”

He is not a good enough man to stop. Years later, even now, all Sylvain is and will ever be is this man. This selfish man that stands before a girl he desperately needs. It seems, even when her heart breaks in front of him by his hands, Sylvain can still only take. 

He is awful, he knows, but Ingrid apparently loves him anyway. 

“You never told me,” he presses. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“How could I?” Her eyes snap back to his, burning and brimming. Her hand crunches hard on the paper the bouquet is wrapped in. Her voice is angry and fierce. “You don’t love me the way I want you to.”

Everything about how Ingrid looks, everything she says, causes something to rise in him. It’s that angry misery again. It’s that selfish part of him again. 

“How could you know that?” He fumes. He storms a few steps forward. “When even I don’t know that?”

Ingrid stills every part of her except her breathing, which is heavy and slow. “What?”

“I don’t know what this is Ingrid,” he says, clutching at a chest that burns and beats against the rumble of his heart. “You never gave me a chance to figure it out. You never told me. I didn’t know.”

“How was I supposed to tell you?” Ingrid pushes back just as hard. “When every sign you gave me was that you didn’t. Sylvain, I would find you in the back of barnyards or being chased out of beds. What was I supposed to think?”

She’s right. He has no good response to that. There is no good response to that.

“I would have -”

“What? Stopped?” Ingrid says sadly. 

“For you?” he says with quiet resignation. “Yes, I would have.”

“You have,” the guilt presses into Sylvain’s chest as Ingrid continues, “you have stopped for me but it never lasts.”

“That’s different,” he says. “This is different.”

“Is it?”

“I didn’t know!” he says again. “I didn’t know what I was doing to you.”

“What were you doing to me, Sylvain? What do you think you were doing to me?”

“Hurting you. I never wanted to hurt you. I thought I was just hurting myself.”

“I know.” Ingrid sighs, running a hand through her hair. “This isn’t your fault. I don’t want you to feel guilty over something you can’t control. You can’t feel guilty for me.” She pauses for a moment before she continues, “This, for the record, was why I never told you.”

Sylvain grits his teeth and rubs the back of his neck. “Are you going to keep seeing him?”

“Sylvain,” Ingrid sounds so tired. “That still has nothing to do with you.”

“Doesn’t it?” he asks.

“You’re so full of yourself.”

_“Doesn’t it?”_

“I don’t love him,” Ingrid snaps, “if that’s what you’re asking. But I could do worse.”

Sylvain frowns. She _could_ do worse. That doesn’t mean he likes it. “Ingrid, I don’t want you with him.” 

“Sylvain-”

“I don’t want you to leave. I need you.”

“I already told you I’m not leaving,” Ingrid says. “He won’t make me leave. It’s one of the conditions of our courtship.”

The last word hits him harder than it should given what Sylvain already knows, given what Ingrid says. She won’t leave him.

It’s not enough. 

“I need you,” he says again.

“I know, and I’m here for you Sylvain,” Ingrid promises. “But you don’t want me.”

“What makes you think I don’t want you?”

He’s being cruel again, he knows, judging by how Ingrid looks so stricken. 

“You’ve never shown me any indication.”

He steps up to her. He almost expects her to back away, to push him off. She does not. She waits. This is the closest he has been to her since that brief encounter after battle. Ingrid stills. He presses his forehead onto hers. “How about now?”

“Sylvain,” she whispers. He catches her breath against his lips. “Please don’t.”

“I think about you,” he confesses. “Ingrid, I can’t stop thinking about you. No one else has ever made me-” he breathes a shuddering breath as Ingrid’s eyes close again, “made me- I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re thinking about me because you’re hurt,” she tries to explain but she doesn’t push away from him. “And because I kissed you.”

“We’ve kissed before.”

He hears and feels her sharp breath. Ingrid takes a step back, just out of reach. “You remember.”

“I thought it was a dream,” he tells her. “But it wasn’t. I kissed you. Wasn’t that enough indication?”

“You kiss a lot of people, Sylvain. And you were drunk. You didn’t even remember it.” 

He huffs, frustrated, and angry. “You’re not listening to me, Ingrid.” 

“I’m listening, Sylvain,” she takes another step backward. “Sylvain, I’ve been listening. I’ve been listening for years. I know what I am to you.”

“You’re not listening now,” he pleads. He wants so badly to cut the distance again. He wants to press up right against her and pull her towards him. 

“Then what is it Sylvain?” She’s holding herself so steady. It is more than Sylvain can say for himself. “What are you trying to say?

“You never asked me,” he says finally. “You never asked me to love you.”

“And why would I have done something like that?” she asks softly. 

“I would have tried,” he says. “Ingrid, I would have tried.”

Ingrid looks down at the ground between them. They are still very close. All it would take is one or two steps more. The flowers hang loosely in her hand. “What if you failed?”

“I wouldn’t have.” 

She quirks a small smile that she can’t seem to help. “What makes you say that?”

Sylvain takes all that he feels in his chest and uses it to take the steps forward. His hands move to gently urge her to look at him and then gently rest on her shoulders. “Because I just needed a little help seeing,” he says. “Ingrid, I need you. I’ve always needed you but I also want you. You’re beautiful Ingrid, I’ve always thought so, but this thing I feel, this thing -” he takes a deep breath. “I’ve never felt this way before about anyone. I’ve never felt so afraid and awful and lost before. I don’t know what it is. I just know I only feel it with you. I still need a little help. I’m sorry I’m like this.”

Ingrid shakes her head and blinks up at him with teary eyes and Sylvain thinks, _ah_ , _this must be it._

“I don’t know if I believe you,” she admits. Her empty hand comes to rest flat against his chest. As if she is ready to push him away. “But I want to.” 

“Let me prove it,” he says. “Please.”

He expects her to answer. He expects her to give him a list of things to do but Ingrid only leans up, only brushes her lips against his.

Something instinctual takes over him. It’s that dark thing again, sprinting out of his chest, straight into his hands to press the whole of Ingrid’s body to him. One of his hands roams into her hair, the other grips tight at her waist, and he is sure he is never letting go. He breathes her in deeply and then growls when he feels the flowers press into his side. He doesn’t think when he grabs them; he doesn’t care that he pries her fingers off of the stems and lets the bouquet fall to the floor.

Ingrid doesn’t need them anymore. He can get her new ones. 

She pulls away first. Sylvain chases her but she halts him, the hand still on his chest firm as she braces him back, just a bit. Just enough for her to breathe. Just enough for her to whisper.

 _Okay, Sylvain._ _Okay._

_You can try._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Thanks for all the support! I didn't really expect it when I first started writing it because I had never really intended to write this in the first place and because I wasn't actually sure how readable it would be. When I jotted this down after the shower thought, I knew that I never really wanted it to be anything more than that. I just wanted it to flow from one section to the next section in a way that extended that original thought, which was, essentially, "I'm afraid it'll be always" with a few other sprinkled associated lines and images.
> 
> So this was essentially thought association in narrative form.
> 
> The rest is filled in from my favorite parts about writing and figurative language, so a lot of this is incredibly indulgent in the sense that I just wanted to write the way I like to write, not the way I thought it should be written. Unfortunately, that meant I had no idea where this was going as I was writing it. So it's a little weird, I know! 
> 
> That being said, thank you so much for reading anyway. I really appreciated every one of the responses. <3


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